U.S. Pat. No. 3,711,043 to Cameron-Johnson discloses an aircraft drive wheel having a fluid-pressure-operated motor housed within the wheel and two planetary gear stages housed in a gear box outboard of the motor, the final drive being transmitted from a ring gear of the second gear stage, which is inboard of the first stage, to the wheel through an output drive quill coupled, through a disc-type clutch if desired, to a flanged final drive member bolted to the wheel.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,977,631 to Jenny discloses a wheel drive motor selectively coupled to an aircraft wheel through a rotatably mounted aircraft brake assembly in order to drive the wheels of an aircraft. The normally nonrotating stator portion of a conventional aircraft brake assembly is rotatably mounted about the wheel axle and is rotatably driven through a planetary gear system by the wheel drive motor.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,104,063 to Hartley reviews the prior art on pre-rotation of landing wheels and discloses a device to induce rotation of aircraft landing wheels, using only the force of oncoming air to bring them up to synchronous ground (landing) speed during approach to landing. The wheel has an impeller attached to it, and the wheel is rotated by air from a duct having a forward air intake and an air outlet.
The use of small compact electric motors inside, or in close proximity to, a wheel for direct drive has a number of problems. For example, to move a medium sized aircraft at about 7 knots, approximately 200 hp is required, which equates to approximately 14200 newton-meters of torque and a tractive effort of 41400 newtons, or 9300 pounds.
For such a requirement, torque versus speed characteristics of the load, and the maximum speed characteristics of the load when driven, fall well outside the ideal predicted by motor scaling laws. This means that a motor sized to produce the torque necessary for direct drive of the load will be operating at well below maximum speed, and thus well below maximum power levels. The active materials of the machine will be underutilized, the machine will be far heavier than necessary, and the machine efficiency will be poor.
A solution is to provide for a higher speed, lower torque motor coupled to the load via suitable gearing. This gearing trades speed for torque and provides a lower speed, higher torque drive to the final load. The load however, is expected to operate at much higher than normal motoring speeds. This presents a significant problem, because, in these cases, the load may be rotating faster than the motor and may accelerate the motor via the gearing system. Under these conditions, the motor would be forced to spin at much higher speeds than normal.